Buying & Selling Yachts - What's A Fair Commission?

My only 1st hand experience of this was about 7 or 8 years ago, when a very unhappy engineer (whose mother tongue was not English) on a 28m. motor yacht in the 'process of changing owners' asked me to translate some of the terms of a 'presale' agreement from a major yacht broker.

He was quite unhappy about his 'cut'. And I was flabbergasted to learn that according to the document, both the outgoing skipper and engineer, together with the incoming skipper and engineer were going to share the bagatelle of nearly US$200,000. All this out of a sale price of something like US$3.5 million?! I have no idea whether or not the information contained in the document was at some stage made known to the buyer's broker let alone the actual owners involved in the sale and purchase. But I suspect that it would not have been. If only for all the 'Chinese walls' that existed in many places in those days.

I suppose that one could excuse such behaviour, considering that it was quite a long time ago, and probably simply doesn't happen anymore. Any comments?

Considering that many of these brokers are also fully-fledged yacht managers today, the question could be asked: Since they earn such fat fees managing somebody's yacht, shouldn't they consider waiving the bulk of their commissions when the owner eventually decides to sell? By all means, charge for the glamourous brochures, full page ads in the usual yachting magazines etc., but how about stop milking the owners...?!